ut
he has glorious blue eyes, which get quite black when he is angry, as he
was when he was talking about his father. I should tremble before him
in his wrath. He is so tall that I only come up to his shoulder. Father
calls him the red tapeworm; but that's really not fair. He is very broad
but so thin. In Unter-Toifen we stopped for breakfast, eating the
food we had brought with us; about half an hour; then the schoolmaster
hurried us all away, for we had quite 10 miles to walk. The two boys
made a party with other boys, and we five girls, we 2, the 2 Weiners,
and Marina, led the way. Aunt Alma walked with a clergyman's wife from
Hildesheim, or whatever it was called, and with the schoolmaster's wife.
It was _awfully_ dull at first, so that I began to be sorry that I
had begged Father to let us go. But after we had gone a few miles the
schoolmaster's son and three bright young fellows came along and walked
with us. Then we had such fun that we could hardly walk for laughing,
and the elders had continually to drive us on. Marina was quite
unrestrained, I could never have believed that she could be so jolly.
One of the schoolmaster's daughters fell down, and some one pulled her
out of the brook into which she had slid because she was laughing so
much. I really don't know what time we got to Inner-Lahn, for we were
enjoying ourselves so much. Dinner had been ordered ready for us, and we
were all frantically hungry. We laughed without stopping, for we had all
sat down just as we had come in, although Aunt Alma did not want us to
at first. But she was outvoted. I was _especially pleased_ to show Hero
Siegfried that I could amuse myself very well without him, for he had
frozen on to the aspiring actress, or she had frozen on to him--I don't
know which, or at least I did not know _then!_ Since we were sitting all
mixed up everyone had to pay for himself, and Father said next day we
had spent a perfect fortune; but that was not in the hotel, it happened
later, when we were buying mementoes. And I think Dora gave Marina 3
crowns, so that she could buy some things too. But Dora never lets on
about anything of that sort. I must say I like her character better and
better; in those ways she is very like Mother. Well, our purchases were
all packed into two or three rucksacks, and were kept for a raffle in
Unter-Toifen on the way back. I must have spent at least 7 crowns, for
Father had given each of us 5 crowns before we started, and I